Lauren Markoe

Lauren Markoe covered government and features as a daily newspaper reporter for 15 years before joining the Religion News Service staff as a national correspondent in 2011. She previously was Washington correspondent for The State (Columbia, S.C.)

While the Roman Catholic world digests a Vatican letter confirming the church’s prohibition on gluten-free wafers, Protestant churches continue to place orders for a Eucharist that won’t bother the gluten-intolerant.

Russia’s Supreme Court will soon decide whether to label Jehovah’s Witnesses as an extremist group, a designation members of the faith fear would lead to the shuttering of their more than 2,300 congregations in that country.

Following a report that President Trump is thinking of scrapping the ambassador position assigned to combat global anti-Semitism, a bipartisan group of 167 U.S. House members sent a letter asking him to appoint one soon.

Federal judges may find the President Donald Trump’s new executive order on immigration more acceptable than the last.
But many religious groups and faith leaders see no meaningful difference in the new measure, which Trump signed privately Monday (March 6).